


Blood Is Always Thicker Than Water

by skyline



Category: Fringe
Genre: Daddy Issues, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-11 19:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyline/pseuds/skyline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A father is this.</p>
<p>Love. Warmth. Security.</p>
<p>Peter’s father is none of those things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Is Always Thicker Than Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaded_jane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaded_jane/gifts).



> This is really barely a drabble, but a while back I told jaded_jane that I'd write Fringe fic. It's not super long, basically just really brief reflections on Peter and Walter, but ummmmm I hope it's okay anyway? I've never written Fringe before, so NERVES.

  
A father is this.  
  
Love.  
  
Warmth.  
  
Security.  
  
Peter’s father is none of those things.  
  
Was none of those things. It’s hard to keep the versions of the man straight; the memory of the stern, imposing man that reigned over his childhood does not mesh with the helpless, batty scientist he met as an adult. Add a dash of the terrifying, manipulative Walternate, and mix in the agoraphobic, world weary semi-stranger he now has to handle with care.  
  
Handling things is hard. Peter is so beyond used to looking after himself, but he had no idea how to cope with Walter too, at least not at first. He was slowly getting a hang of it. He really thought he was. Then the world changed around him, as it is so very prone to doing these days. He has a whole new father to deal with, a new carbon copy of his dad, changed in the smallest of ways.  
  
It’s three o’clock in the morning, and Walter sits by the kitchen table drinking tea or bourbon or glasses of cold milk, cocktails and mocktails that taste like maple syrup or cotton candy or cinnabons. He wants red vines, woke Peter up yelling at the top of his lungs for them and threw a tantrum when Peter said no. There aren’t any stores open.  
  
That’s a lie. There are a few City Cons and a diner or two that sells penny candy with old school fifties charm, and the gas station down the street usually has something to offer, but Peter is not getting dressed, not to suit Walter’s ever changing whims.  
  
“But I would like a red vine,” his father whines, and that’s always the same. All three versions of Walter like licorice, like to twist it around in their mouths like straw while they map out the universe in their heads.  
  
Their house is the same too. Peter still knows all of its nooks and crevices. When he was a kid, he would run around in his dad’s lab coat in the big, empty place and pretend to be a superhero. He would make-believe he’d saved his mother from the rope, invent a last memory of her as a smile that was not tinged with pain.  
  
He sees that same smile on Walter, sometimes. He hates it. He always has, with every version, going all the way back to his youth. It is a terrifying thing to understand that your father is frail, no matter how much you despise him. It’s half the reason why he ran, from America to Timbuktu to Afghanistan and onwards.  
  
Inevitable, really. His mother was weak and his father is crazy, and Peter is, inexorably, a runner. Just like his parents before him, he cannot stick it out. He cannot stay. Could not. Cannot. He tried to stay, for her. He stuck around Boston longer than he’d been in any one place since he was a teenager. He tried, but he ended up in this weird, upside down world full of Zeppelins and amber and places that shouldn’t exist but did. He made his way back and found himself here. In the world that is like his world, but is not.  
  
God, it’s hard to keep this stuff straight. But Peter is adaptable. Runners have to be. Maybe that’s what makes him uniquely situated to love three different versions of the same woman. Because he does, despite himself. He likes her when she’s broken and he likes her when she’s whole. There is no manifestation of this strong, fearless female that he does not love, at least not one that he’s met yet.  
  
Well, he thinks it’s love. A kid is supposed to learn about that from their parents, because love is one of the things that a mother and a father are supposed to embody. Peter’s mom is dead, and Walter? Does Walter even know what love is? Peter doesn’t know. He is never sure if he is loved, or if it’s a carefully crafted illusion, some kind of defense mechanism his mind has built to cope with all the crazy, twenty four seven. There is a huge possibility that Peter just never learned how to love, or how to be loved, growing up in his big empty house full of superheroes and chemistry sets.  
  
It would make sense. Those chemistry sets were his best friend when he was five. His dad, his real dad, the version of his dad that stands so tall he casts everyone else in shadows, bought it for him. He has this vague recollection of playing with it, learning to build with elements the way most kids learn to build with tinker toys. Science is cool.  
  
He’s his father’s son, in the end. Hopefully not too fully. Walter lives on the line that separates men from beasts, and Peter worries that one day he will cross it too. They are both alike in so many other ways, reckless and irresponsible, men shaped by the women they surround themselves with. It’s a valid fear.  
  
“Not tonight,” Peter tells Walter, and he is not apologetic. He refuses to be. It’s just candy.  
  
Walter pouts all the same.  
  
Peter slides into the chair next to him, running his hands over the scratched surface of the dining room table, where he learned the periodic table over TV dinners he usually had to make for himself. “I could make hot chocolate instead.”  
  
Walter lights up.  
  
“Hot cocoa! Wonderful! ...Will you drink it with me?”” His expression shifts, and there it is. That smile that makes Peter want to run to the other side of the world. But he stays.  
  
Not just for Olivia, although she’s a big reason for a lot of things.  
  
For now, Peter stays because he knows all the things that a father is _supposed_ to be, but he only has the slightest inkling of who Walter _is_. It’s nights like these, when the air is still and quiet and dark and Walter shows a trace of vulnerability, that Peter gets the chance to learn.  
  
“Of course.”


End file.
